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In the recent episode of Elementary, Holmes interviews a potential murder suspect and later listens to a different recorded interview where the suspect gives the exact same account. Holmes: “There’s virtually no variance in each of his accounts. His story never changes. Ergo, lying.”
Watson: “Well, if he was telling the truth, then why would you expect it to change?”
Holmes: “Our meeting today brought to mind this recent study by a group of psychologists. They found that counting the number of unique words used by witnesses was an exceptional lie detection technique. Liars stick to streamlined stories. They don’t deviate from the linguistic avenues they’ve already mapped out in their original telling. They use fewer words and particularly ones that evoke sense memory.”
Watson: “Because they’re not drawing from memory.”
Holmes: “Tallying singular words may be the best way to root out liars…”
I’ve always felt that JS absolutely believed what he experienced, that there is a sincerity about his accounts, and that the differences in FV accounts may have made them more confusing to know for sure exactly what happened, sure, but also make them more believable that *something* of that nature happened. Another example being how Moroni came to visit him four times that night, recounting the same thing each time. A peculiar detail to include if it was made up.
So is there a FAIR apologist on the Elementary writing staff?
I saw that episode. Wasn’t the story actually memorized? Or maybe I’m confusing that one with another show. Anyway, I also believe Joseph Smith believed what he said about the FV. It’s actually why I believe he was a prophet, because if he didn’t believe it he had plenty of opportunity to just fade into the frontier and walk away – but he didn’t do that, he stuck to his story.
I can see their point, if there is absolutely no variance in the retelling of a story it does begin to sound more rehearsed than real… but only when limited to the presence of slight variations in language used to describe the same story. Variations in major aspects of the story is another thing entirely. Inconsistencies can point to someone not remembering which story they told to which person. Also we only have a few written sources for the FV. We don’t really know how it was told and how it evolved other than imagining what goes in the gaps between the written accounts. We’d need to hear the FV account many times directly from JS’s lips to really get at the point the show was making.
According to some historians (including Bushman/RSR), Nibbler, JS didn’t really talk about the FV very much. While today the first missionary lesson is almost always the FV, in the early church they used the BoM much more as a missionary tool. nibbler wrote:Also we only have a few written sources for the FV. We don’t really know how it was told and how it evolved other than imagining what goes in the gaps between the written accounts. We’d need to hear the FV account many times directly from JS’s lips to really get at the point the show was making.
That’s a good point. Someone on another forum posted this quote from Richard Bushman, which speaks to the idea that only the 1832 account is reliably directly from Joseph…
Quote:I am very much impressed by Joseph Smith’s 1832 History account of his early visions. This is the one partially written in his own hand and the rest dictated to Frederick G. Williams. I think it is more revealing than the official account presumably written in 1838 and contained in the Pearl of Great Price. We don’t know who wrote the 1838 account. Joseph’s journal indicates that he, Sidney Rigdon, and George Robinson collaborated on beginning the history in late April, but we don’t know who actually drafted the history. It is a polished narrative but unlike anything Joseph ever wrote himself. The 1832 history we know is his because of the handwriting. It comes rushing forth from Joseph’s mind in a gush of words that seem artless and uncalculated, a flood of raw experience. I think this account has the marks of an authentic visionary experience. There is the distance from God, the perplexity and yearning for answers, the perplexity, and then the experience itself which brings intense joy, followed by fear and anxiety. Can he deal with the powerful force he has encountered? Is he worthy and able? It is a classic announcement of a prophet’s call, and I find it entirely believable.
Yeah, I had heard how the FV wasn’t that big of a deal in the past which to me is interesting in its own right. You know, I never actually bothered to read the 1832 account. I freely admit that up until now I never delved deeper than some infographic that highlighted the differences in the various accounts. Shame on me for being a little lazy and allowing others to conclude things for me when the source was readily available for my consumption.
I repented.
lotsand lotsof poetic tics present in his narrative that reminded me of things that (in 1832) were echoed in both JS’s past and in his future. At the very least it grounds the account to JS, it really feels like it’s him telling his story. I think it also shows what kind of influence JS had in many of the revelations he produced… or what kind of influence the revelations he produced had on him. Either way it certainly had his signature. I like the 1832 account, too. At the Givens fireside I recently attended, they made the point that Joseph didn’t really didn’t consider himself a prophet because of the FV. They believe he saw that as a more personal thing, and the prophet stuff didn’t start until after Moroni’s visits. They also gave a little food for thought about the years intervening the FV and Moroni, where it appears to be JS didn’t have any kinds of revelation or heavenly interaction. DarkJedi wrote:According to some historians (including Bushman/RSR), Nibbler, JS didn’t really talk about the FV very much. While today the first missionary lesson is almost always the FV, in the early church they used the BoM much more as a missionary tool.
Yes, and that leads us to question whether JS retroactively added the FV as an earlier spiritual experience. But I think it’s worthwhile to consider the effect of the two “visions”.In early-19th-Centruy America, God seemed alive. He spoke to lots of people. JS saying that he had seen God and conversed with him was not that unusual. Everybody knew someone or knew of someone who claimed to have seen God or heard his voice. The visitation of Moroni was different, because there was an artifact produced: the BofM. The early message of the Church was natural. God had sent a heavenly messenger to bring a book of new scripture forth… and here, we have a copy of that very book.
Conversely, today, we live in a time when God seems dead or distant. He doesn’t talk to anybody. So, it is a much more natural message to talk about the visitation of God to mankind, just like in Bible days, when God DID speak to prophets.
In the early Church, the BofM was the message that God sent to us. In our day, the BofM is a byproduct of God speaking to us again.
I believe that the transformation from one message to the other is attributable to JS, himself. The BofM was his most amazing achievement, IMO, yet he had already produced and published it by the end of 1829 (around the time of his 24th birthday). One thing about JS, he never sat back to enjoy what he had created; he continually reinvented it. Within six months of publishing the BofM, he was working on his new translation of the Bible. Shortly after that, he began the concept of Zion, soon after, he envisioned a Temple. But even that Temple wasn’t the end; he would envision an entirely new type of Temple only a few years later. Priesthood expanded from Elders to High Priests, to First Presidency, to the Anointed Quorum. Marriage went from union to sealing to polygamy. The People went from family & friends to community, to establishments, to theocracy, to kingdom. Baptism went from immersion, to washing & annointing, to baptism for the dead. Missionary work went from community, to region, to world-wide.
So, JS, himself, didn’t dwell much on the BofM, just like he had forgotten about the Kirtland Temple concept by the time he got going in Nauvoo. The BofM was still important to him, as evidenced by his working on producing better printed versions of it, but he seemed rarely to preach from it. In my opinion this was because the BofM had already been published. It was there in print… but JS was always exploring the new and pushing the envelope. Preaching from the BofM was preaching to the choir. So, the message naturally moved from “God delivered the BofM” to “God is leading us through a prophet”. And that shift made the FV more relevant than the visitation of Moroni.
This is only my opinion, though.
Nicely put OON. There is a similar issue going on with the priesthood restoration. It doesn’t get documented and barely referenced for years after the church’s founding. Then later it becomes a major leg of our message – having uninterupted line of authority.
I also wonder about the reported meeting where JS gave all the keys of the priesthood to the Q12. At the time it seemed like such a small thing and certainly not a clear designation of succession.
Did these things happen as God putting in place the building blocks that would later be important? Did they happen in some form but are later reinterpreted, repurposed, and in some ways misrepresented for the modern church narrative? Could they have been added in retroactively once it became apparent that such events were needed? The whole thing shifts depending on your vantage point.
Excellent analysis, On Own Now. Truly excellent insight. I am going to excerpt it and start a new thread about it.
I agree, OON, good analysis, and I think it lines up with what people like Bushman and Givens say. Since it looks like it’s going to be its own thread I’ll comment further there. For a church that is in the truth business, we sure do take a lot of liberties with the truth!
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